Clay Lambert, “On Language Moves On” (The Kicker, Wick Communications, Mar. 25, 2010)
There is a new word sheriff in town. And it’s that guy on the left.
His name is Ben Zimmer. (By the way, the guy on the right is the late William Safire.) He is executive producer of vocabulary.com and something called “the visual thesaurus.” That last one is pretty incredible. Take a look for yourself.
The New York Times Magazine has announced that Zimmer will take over for the Safire and begin to write the iconic “On Language” column. Those are some mighty big shoes and I don’t envy Zimmer the task, but I guess someone who studied linguistics at Yale and is a consultant for the Oxford English Dictionary is probably up to the task.
Read the rest here.